I take issue with your conclusion that ” the diminished time and attention is actually a positive thing”. It’s Not a positive thing. It’s an understandable tradeoff, but it’s not positive. It’s making the best of a bad situation, but it’s not positive. Three therapists and a 14-year effort to get One University degree are symptoms of a deeply problematic childhood with lingering negative effects. Things are improving in my life, but they could have been a lot better a lot earlier if things had been different in those first 18 years.

I learned this by asking a Catholic priest, when I was 10, just who the people were on the outside, looking in on the Garden of Eden, you know, since both of the people in existance were inside already.

It doesn’t matter who tells you that.  Anyone talking shit about single mothers in any context gets me pissed because they’re talking about my entire fucking life.  In these kids’ position I would get pretty upset. 

I don’t really understand why you’d expect people to just sit quietly through something like this when it disagrees with their values.  Of course they’re going to get upset.

I think that would be fine. PP/NOW have to engage in legislation-oriented activites because churches are committing First Amendment violations and their members are proselytizing.

Sure, the Constitution prohibits the government from getting mixed up in religion, but, as we constantly see, there’s nothing preventing the reverse.

These kids saw their friends being insulted and humiliated.  Straight kids saw their QUILTBAG friends being insulted.  QUILTBAG kids saw their adopted friends being insulted.  Adopted kids saw their friends raised in one-parent households being insulted.  Straight kids raised in two-parent households by their biological parents saw their QUILTBAG adopted friends raised by single parents being insulted. 

These kids understood the politics.   But they also understood friendship and loyalty.  When they spoke up, right there in the assembly, it wasn’t just to oppose the politics that was being preached at them.  It was to stop the people running the assembly from continuing to hurt their friends.  And it was to let their friends know that they weren’t alone, that their classmates had their back.  

The original article has the kids describing how students were crying, visibly distressed, as they were being attacked in their own school which should have been a safe place to be. Waiting to protest, taking complaints to their parents, staying quiet and “respectful” during the assembly would have meant leaving all those kids who were being insulted, who were having their lives and loved ones demeaned, to sit and listen, without any word of kindness or support.  If someone is being hurt, right now, it is immoral to wait quietly until it is all over to object.  

The kids who spoke up were completely respectful.  They respected human dignity.  They respected good people, their friends, when they saw their friends being attacked.  

What they didn’t respect was adults with titles of authority using their power to insult, demean and bully children.  Children who were a captive audience to the adults attacking them, expected by school rules to sit quietly as they and their families were insulted and humiliated.  

As humans, they understood and acted with kindness and dignity.  As activists, they acted as allies when they saw oppression.

***

And since when does the Catholic Church oppose adoption?  Isn’t it supposed to be the wonderful answer to every problem pregnancy, so that even a woman about to die because of pregnancy complications in the first trimester of pregnancy doesn’t need an abortion because “yay adoption”?  

And if a good-Catholic-woman is divorced by her converted-to-something-else husband, isn’t she forbidden to remarry?  Isn’t raising her children as a single mother the Catholic thing to do, if you’re abandoned by your spouse?

Not only were the people running the assembly being cruel to children, they were being utter fools about their own Church’s policies.

Certainly there may be no “law” that will interfere with a moral or religious lecture at a Catholic school, but does that give them the right to treat these students as human pawns in a political game?

However your proposition could be tested emperically, not sure it’ll stand up though.

Also, if you have those six kids in the one room, you get economies of scale.

The problem is, when you’re dealing with low numbers like the difference between one and two parents, the amount of available parenting time doesn’t always follow a linear scale. At least with two parents, they can spell each other.

Tight religious bonds are one way to get other people to help look after your kids though. One thing we really need to start using technology to do more is get parents together so they can trade off down days so they have time to themselves or just sleep. We’re not there yet.

I’m glad you had a good childhood, I wish more people did.

Any non-profit is allowed to talk about their position on an issue, as well as their position on a referendum or piece of legislation.

There’s a difference between a non-profit and a 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit.

To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.

http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=96099,00.html

So… hmm… personal anecdote doesn’t quite mean anything.

The Church has an increastingly difficult time propogating its teachings, not the least reason for which is that beginning with the invention of the printing press more and more people started learning what is actually written in the Holy Books and thinking critically for themselves about whether any of it could possibly be true.

Humans are born to reason, and reason we do.  Some of us like to hold on to the myths, believing that myths have value.  Aesop’s Fables had value, too.

Not all of the myths are so valuable, though, and it is counterproductive for a society that claims to value freedom to continue to encourage bigotry.

There are things that threaten the healthy existence of an otherwise free society: theft, murder, dishonesty, violence especially against children and the tolerance of violence especially against children… these things should not be tolerated.  But loving a person whose skin is a different color than ours or whose sex is the same, or a child who is not our own blood?  Those are not bad things.

Superstition is giving way to reason.  Long live reason!

I’m sure the church is good with an indoctrination rate of over 90%.

Almost like something happens to us that takes up all the time and attention of the previously openminded american adult.

You know, like, basic survival in the plutocracy constructed by and for the olds.

That said, more violations will undoubtedly occur as religious rhetoric intensifies again in the U.S. If secularists remain aware and report this illegal activity, enforcement may increase (especially with high-profile cases).

http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/136905078.html 

From the article, it appears that the folks giving the lecture are/were misguided and “old school” and they bounced hard when they tried to influence the “new school” population at DeLasalle. 

My guess is, it is only a matter of decades, at best, before the school regresses to the mean and is no different from any of the other Catholic high schools in the Twin Cities.

Qualifying (or disqualifying info):  I’m not Catholic, wasn’t raised Catholic.  Am currently an Atheist father of two high school kids.  And my kids do not attend DeLasalle.